At least for me, the Important Topics section, including the Book of the Year thread, has disappeared.  And we are, in any event, overdue for a poll on the 2016 book of the year.  So I am starting this new thread in the hopes of getting things moving.  If the old thread is still viable, then, by all means, feel free to delete this one and use that one instead.

Bibs wrote on 03/18/17 at 12:26:49:


Ok, sorry I miss the 2015 part. Yes Jorge Ferreira is a good friend, but my nomination was based only on his top notch explanations and analysis, something which was not a surprise, taking on account that he was the best philosophy student from his university too. 

Some interesting points made earlier, if in a slightly unfortunate manner.
It's a fair point actually I think re: balancing accessibility and usability, versus depth and completeness.

May irk the purists, but I found the 'Dangerous Weapons' series by Everyman to be the most directly useful in terms of helping me score points. To win games. I 'learnt' more about chess, in a more profound way, from the old Marin series on the English, but it is also good to notch up some points with hacky, tricky stuff. 

One can balance the two aspects. Choose ... both. Choose life, etc.

My nomination goes to: Dominating 1.d4 with the King's Indian Defence by a brilliant presenter IM Jorge Ferreira. 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Dei3Z9gi7oQ

I really enjoy the Kotronias KID series but it weighs in over 20 lbs. Hard to travel by plane with it.  It adds like $30 to the lugagge fees!   

The King's Gambit (Nessie!) by John Shaw is 1254g and I really do own rubber door stops that weigh less than 400g   

The authors themselves state that many of the novelties come from deep probing and prodding of an engine and are engine checked.

Thus, I stand by my original assertions.   

So, no doubt I am taking a bit of a whiz here at QC expense but I mean it all in good fun and have not one single cell of animosity in my heart. 

I just find that the line I get from Chess Stars actually show up on boards in the games I play really frequently and the QC lines not so much.   

Is that fair enough?      

If it is not to late to make a nomination I offer:

THE SPANISH MAIN ROAD
by: Evgeniy Solozhenkin
Published by: Chess Stars

I think this outfit is the real benchmark of concise, pragmatic tomes for real otb players.

No offense to Quality, but their door stoppers full of computer driven novelties just are not as practical for the majority of players.  I still buy all of them that play into my own repertoire but these Chess Stars books are compact and dense and easy to carry five of them, and thus 5x the info on 5 different openings in the same space while travelling.

I'd like to add 1.e4 vs The Sicilian III by Parimarjan Negi. I like it best among his three books against the sicilian.
For the first time I feel I am beginning to get a handle on the various Kan/Taimanov move orders. (Usually I end 
up being outmoveordered, but this book gives me hope).   

My other two candidates (Shaw's playing e4 and Delchev's Attacking The English/Reti have already been proposed.)